Nobody likes Mondays, but still you drag your ass out of bed, and stumble to a job that never pays you enough, but maybe you have rent, a mortgage, car payments, a pregnant wife, and two kids in college. So you manage the stress that comes with Mondays.

And somewhere in your head you have an idea that it’s not going to be like this forever. Somewhere in your head you have an idea that you’ll earn enough money so that one day you’ll have the financial freedom to retire and do the things that you really want to do.

It’s why you open a savings account, contribute to your IRA, pay social security tax. and it’s why you invest in the stock market because you know that in order to really get ahead, your money needs to make money.

But you don’t read the Wall Street Journal and you didn’t go to business school, so you just hope that you made the right decisions and invested wisely so that your future is secure.

This is why I believe Charles Schwab, the financial brokerage house should be ashamed of its “Talk to Chuck” advertising campaign. The campaign which has run on TV for over a year, uses cartoon characters to voice the real dilemnas and fears that individual investors have.

It plays to those fears. But in reality it’s just a cartoon that some animator drew and an actor did the voice over for. Because the truth is a real person can’t express the emotions of fear, angst, and confusion that a cartoonist can seamlessly draw into the lines of a face.

And despite the fact that the ad talks nothing about Charles Schwab’s performance you’re compelled to trust the cartoon. It is a false trust designed to take advantage of the individual’s financial fears for the sole purpose that the company, not the individual, can earn more money, and for that Charles Schwab should be ashamed.

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